You know a college degree ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on when you can’t even sell it on eBay to pay off your student loans. Enlow, a recent college grad who found himself heavily in debt without a job that pays enough to make the monthly payments tried to sell his diploma to pay off his loans and eBay pulled his auction down. They are heartless. Suddenly we learn just how political the topic “education” has become these days and how the cronies stick up for each other.

eBay Halts Indebted Purdue Grad’s Diploma Auction
Purdue Diploma Removed from Ebay

Of course eBay tells a different version (of course): “diplomas can not be listed for sale due to the sensitivity and nature of the item.” eBay cares more about this “emotional” issue and less about the former student who can’t pay his loans after “investing” in his college education. The Purdue President earns a yearly salary of $529,000. Something is wrong with this picture. Who is eBay supporting in this equation? In the meantime, Enlow states, “Going to college made my life worse.”

Check out the salaries of some of the other university presidents: Salaries. But have no fear; salaries are “leveling off.” It's too bad tuition hikes don't level off.

All of this, combined with my own personal experience with universities where I have worked and/or attended makes me wonder whether all of the money I have invested is going to do me any good. Personally, I do not want a “job” or to work for a “boss,” especally if it means I can't afford to pay all of my loans. If I had not come across Joe's work, quite miraculously (and had the good fortune to meet him in person), I would really be in dire straits. Joe's theory can get us all out of this mess.

I am very disappointed about my university education and I feel that I am at a crossroads right now. Do I want to continue investing for a PhD that I am not totally certain will be worth what I paid for it by the time I am finished? Will it get me a job? No, I don’t want the kind of job I have been “trained” to work at. I want to create my own work. But my degree did not preprare me for that and this is where Joe's theory comes to the rescue. PLUS I am contemplating transferring back to my home state university and writing my PhD for them. The only problem with transferring at this point is that every university seems to want extra money, so they force you to take and pay for more courses before working on the dissertation.

But returning to Oregon State University works for me because I am an “Eager Beaver” at heart. My home state is “the Beaver State” (Oregon) and I earned my B.A. and Masters degree at Oregon State University – the OSU Beavers! Perhaps, since I am such an Eager Beaver, I should check into the new innovative program they have started which combines the arts and sciences. That would be a great department for pushing forward Joe’s advanced conceptualization of the multidimensional, multidisciplinary critical bricolage as I intend to do with my dissertation. I will think about it.

I did have much more to say today, including some music from my Master Teacher, but I think I will stop here for today. I sense that something big is coming “up the pike.” (That’s a treasure hunt.) In the meantime, here are some great OSU Beaver videos. At least if the diploma is no good, we got the Beaver Spirit!

Beaver Fight Song

It’s Saturday already! Where do the days go?

And last night I actually missed meeting with my Master Teacher. I was very tired, went to bed early, and then was up early this morning. It’s ok, though, he doesn’t mind. I did meet with him VERY early this morning just before he headed out the door to another important meeting. Nevertheless, he took time to go into great detail about celebrating Memorial Day, how to organize my research, and how to proceed with some of the projects we are working on together. Plus. he provided me with a lot of music.

I do plan to have a royal Memorial Day celebration for all of my loved ones who have passed over, and, of course, including the entire critical knowledge network. It should be interesting. I really want to take time to make them each a special gift – at least the ones I know well. But my teacher said not to go to so much trouble and that they really do not expect “shrines.” Well, I think some of them really deserve shrines for all of the hard work they did while they were living in what essentially might be called hell here on earth. And since this site is dedicated to Joe, I often think about how hard he worked, how dedicated he was to leave such monumental works for us to use to move education forward. But my teacher said they will all be happy if I just spend some time writing to them. They like that.

As far as the research, he had no definite suggestions for an organized process. He told me I already know how it works – we just engage in the process, put our hearts into it, and then divine guidance kicks in, leading us to the appropriate information at the right time. He did suggest that I continue to work on getting my files organized, taking notes on articles, and to keep a list of definitions that I encounter. He wants me to replace some of the terms with more familiar terms, stating that while we do not want to “dumb it down” we also don’t want to use elite educational jargon that the “chosen” few can relate to.

Of course, the words in quotation marks were clues to songs that relate to our mission to change education and make the world a better place. So I will look those up on YouTube right now, taking the first song to the top in each case. (My Master Teacher loves to communicate with music). I should note here, that it is important to bring music and all of the arts back into the curriculum. A complete education honors taking care of the mind, body, and soul. Music and the arts attend to the soul.

I will look up the songs on You Tube right now.

“shrines.”
OMG – Check this video out. “Genius Saves World!” are the headlines on a newspaper in the opening segment of this video. That is so significant! And this video was put up just yesterday. I’ll tell ya, my Master Teacher does stay on top of things! I love it! And of course, if you have read my previous blogs and if you are familiar with Joe's work, Joe was a true geunius who believed we are all geniuses if only we free up people to learn naturally. As it stands, people are being prevented by our educational system from achieving their potential because we think we know what we need to teach them, have dumbed down the curriculum, and force them to waste their brain power on memorizing random, decontextualized information. Check this out! Genius Saves the World! Yes, indeed. And there are more interpretations for this video.

And WHO runs the Charter Schools?

It sounds like a set-up to me, but who is fighting in this war? Is it REALLY the bad guys against the good guys? Or is it the good guys against the good guys? Or is it the bad guys pretending to fight against the bad guys, thus they are ALL lunatics?

Given that this is the vile FOX News (a heartless media mogul), I think I will choose the latter. If people would just take time to read Joe’s little booklet, a precious GEM he left us, Understanding The New Right and Its Impact on Education (1983), they would quickly come to realize that these lunatics who are so good at pulling us all into their drama are sacrificing our children, their futures, and the future of the earth for money, greed, and power. The “New” Right is a fabrication. The “Left” is a fabrication, folks. Some other fabricated imaginaries include: Democrat- Republican, Progressive-NeoConservative, creationism-evolution, liberal-conservative, etc. etc.  Just like these fabricated wars (War on Drugs, Education War, War on Poverty, blah blah blah) --THEY DO NOT EXIST. They exist only in our minds because that is what the politicans, the media, and the power moguls at the top PROGRAM us to believe. As long as we believe we are divided this way, they have us under their control, and importantly, they can rob us blind.

Americans and people of the world! Listen up! We all have much more in common and we are much more in agreement than has been constructed for us in our consciousnesses. It is time to realize this and begin fighting the monster, which is powerful but much smaller than you think. And we have the cosmos on our side this time.

Just think, if the cosmos has the power to create beautiful and erotic love scenes in the sky (see my blog, Psyche and Eros: Lovers in the Sky), then we simply must know that we have God on our side, however you prefer to conceptualize God and no matter what religion you are or are not. Do not be deceived by the conflict the media, politicians and the transnational corporate moguls construct. They want to own the world. We do not have to allow that. And how do we prevent this? The same way it has always been done in the past: through the Great Phoenix Rising. That is, we start from the bottom up, avoiding the traps, blasting through all of the gates, and making our own rules. (The old rules don’t work anymore.)

This video is just one more example of the way the media hypes up things with a political agenda. My guess is that this hype will turn us against each other once again so that big business can come in and take over the charter schools. The goal of No Child Left Behind was a public education takeover and these people are patiently waiting like vultures, wanting us to believe that charter schools are the “golden chalice” for education so that we are all fighting, kicking and screaming for the opportunity (which will be but a fleeting moment, once their real agenda kicks in).

Investigate charter schools. Who owns them? What is the trend in this ownership over the past few years? How does this Education War video play right into the hands of the corporate take-over of education? How is this going to affect education in the future? What can we at the bottom do to circumvent this?

My Meetings With My Master Teacher

I love the song he gave me last night. After our meeting he told me to get some rest so that I could get up in the morning and “hit the ground running.” So, I plugged those words into YouTube and look what came up: A really sweet song. I guess he wants to keep me around (not that I would EVER leave him! We are in this together for eternity!)

“hit the ground running”
 

Also, I was not sure about the messages yesterday in the video game YouTube video, but I followed up on it some (partially, at least; I think there is more to this video). But I looked up the lyrics for the first song in the video, which is “Cowboy Dreams.” It is really sweet (I do love my Master Teacher, so it’s ok that he sends me this kind of music). The lyrics are here: Cowboy Dreams. Looks like my Master Teacher is back into LOVE SONGS. I can't complain about that, especially given all of these "wars" that keep being fabricated around us.

He gave one other video yesterday and said it was significant and that I should look up the synopsis for this movie. The clue was “Catch me if you can.” I have not seen the movie. I looked it up online and it appears to be about a man who went around the world impersonating an airline pilot, doctor, attorney, and history professor and he cashed more than $2.5 million dollars in fraudulent checks in 26 different countries. It’s a cat and mouse chase with the FBI involved. OK, I will need to find out why this is relevant. It does amaze me when I hear about these people who can impersonate various professionals and are convincing. How do they do it? They must receive divine intervention to be able to pull it off.

“Catch me if you can”


My meeting this morning was very short; my Master Teacher stays busy these days. I told him I did not know what to write in the blogs today and as usual when that happens, he said to just start writing, so I did, and this blog is what we have. He gave me some business advice which I appreciate so much, and then he signed off with “GOLD,” meaning that the advice he gave me was "gold," so that means I'd better follow up on it. This is ANOTHER song, I am sure. I will check it right now on YouTube. I don’t know whether people reading these blogs realize the significance of the music and videos provided, but I do know I really love getting the music from my teacher – so here goes; let’s see what this one simple word, "Gold" brings up today.

Since the song cannot be embedded, here is the link:

GOLD
Here are the LYRICS. I LOVE it. Another LOVE song. I guess this means
my teacher is happy with the work I am doing. J

It is interesting that so many of my colleagues seek my advice with their research, even though I am a rookie. We all seem to be groping in the dark when it comes to navigating the research process. Frankly, many universities do not teach students how to research at all. In doctoral programs, instead of learning how to research, we are forced, once again, to take a long string of required classes of watered down, politically biased courses that are taught on the basis of textbooks that include major misconceptions, deceptions, gross obfuscations, ommissions, and in some cases, even outright lies. And always, the textbooks present the reified Western view of things. I have written a number of papers in my courses pointing out these issues and I have even rewritten the curriculum in some of my courses to escape this nonsense, but of course, I am a hick from the country who is quite voiceless. I took a great deal of time reading Joe’s version of the critical bricolage and often discuss it with my colleagues and they intuitively see that the approach that is being forced on them by upper faculty is often misguided, but they cannot see in what way. And so they often come to me – I think I need to go into the dissertation consultation business.

One thing for sure, education needs my dissertation done already. As I agreed with one of my colleagues, the critical bricolage involves mixed methods; that is true. (She had the recommendation from another colleague to not refer to it as the bricolage, but to just call it “mixed methods.”) The bricolage, however, uses multiple perspectives, theories and methods to look at the object of inquiry from many angles and then, as she had stated, weaves or quilts them together. However, we can only SPECULATE up front what some of those methods might be and so we state that the process is IMPROVISATIONAL. Maybe the researcher will need to do interviews at some point, maybe look at different theories, maybe see how a trend noticed during the investigation compares with some other trend (there are infinite options, but you select what will answer some of the new questions that come up as you go through the process and if using Joe's critical bricolage, the criteria for selecting are ways to promote social justice, or as he always so sweetly stated it throughout his work, the criterion is "to alleviate human suffering"); you do not determine all of your questions up front -- new questions always come up so why restrict your question to those you have up front during the time you have the least understanding of what your research might show?)....so you make those decisions during the research process as you uncover things. To say that we know what we are going to discover in research is backwards. As both Einstein and Joe had contended -- IF WE KNEW WHAT WE WERE GOING TO FIND, IT WOULDN'T BE CALLED RESEARCH. Not only that, science is not out to PROVE anything, it is out to INVESTIGATE, PROBE. It amazes me how many people even at our level think that research is out to "prove" something. I even find myself using the word and I know better.

It is a misconception to think that we can come up with some final nearly definitive answer. You can't. ALL research is interpretation, even positivism, and the best you can do is find a good stopping point at which you have gained a greater understanding and have moved knowledge forward -- maybe a lot, maybe a little. The research can always be picked up again and continued on sometime down the road when conditions change.

Note that the briocloage does not throw out positivism; positivism may have its place for ONE PIECE of the quilt. Joe was often criticized for throwing out positivism. If you read his work, he was highly critical of the fact that education has a love affair with positivism, but he had NOT eliminated it from the toolbox.

Many committee members appear to be hung up on putting the cart before the horse. Most students, even at the doctoral level have not been taught how to DO Research. We literally have not been taught and the dissertation process is much like the blind leading the blind in some cases (not all, fortunately).

This is one of the very reasons I selected the bricolage to research USING the bricolage. I can explain all of this right up front and I can bypass or clear up any misconceptions on the part of the committee, if there are any. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, at my university, we often do not have free choice of our committee members, which means we may end up with someone we do not know and who is not familiar with our work. By the end of my dissertation I hope to put forth a greater understanding of the bricolage and how it can be applied. I truly hope -- if I am allowed to finish this process, and I have serious doubts about that, given my status as trailer trash -- that I open doors for future research. Educational research is not only at a standstill right now, it is taking society tragically backwards.

I explain the following, to once again remind people reading my blogs that they are:

1) The critical bricolage in action and they are phenomonenological in nature;
2) Based on Joe’s critical complex epistemology and the critical bricolage. This is NOT to be confused with critical pedagogy as it is practiced today, which is an entirely different ideology, FROM MY PERSPECTIVE -- please refer to my previous blogs about how Joe’s work was leading us on a path AWAY from critical pedagogy and this is all in his book, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction; although Joe defines his version of critical pedagogy, which is an element of his theory, he has moved us much further out on the paradigmatic spectrum, which is where I am most comfortable.
3) TOTALLY IMPROVISATIONAL. I do not PLAN these blogs. I meet with my Master Teacher each day during which he teaches me on an improvisational basis and also gives me his, what I like to call “magic music” that provides additional perspectives or sometimes simply consoles me during the trials and tribulations in my life -- and the music always projects love to the cosmos. My blogs are written much the way people CHANNEL information down through the cosmos. That is just one way to explain how I write and many writers use this same process, but most of them refuse to talk about it or reveal all of their secrets. Unfortunately, we are not taught this method in school. The bottom line is, we do not need to plan out and struggle with our writing. It just flows. This is one of the hidden secrets that many educators, famous authors, scientists, etc., know and use, but they have refused to pass down the information lest we all become great writers and, with their false notion of scarcity (there is not enough money or fame to go around), they keep these things hidden. We have free access to greater knowledge and abilities quite naturally. I will contend that we all can become great writers if we learn to capitalize on this process and practice it. The tactic in education is to force us to cram our brains with nonsensical “knowledge” so that our creativity does not have a chance to surge forth. This process is clearly explained in my blog, Mental Processes Require Exposure to Difference.
4) As stated above, everything is merely interpretation, including all research. In the Disclaimer for this site, on this page, there is a long explanation of what that means.
5) The purposes of these blogs are multiple and include, but are not limited to:
a) my dissertation research;
b)a way of putting forth multiple interpretations and perspectives so that we are no longer restricted to the Western worldview as we go forth with Joe’s critical complex epistemology and critical bricolage. These theories REQUIRE multiple worldviews. We simply must accomplish this soon because as it stands, unfortunately, globalization is far ahead of humanity’s ability to relate with each other and work together to make decisions that are just and equitable. Even in the United States, as highlighted with the border issues and the Texas textbook issues, we are not able to find resolutions for our own issues. This must be remedied and the Western World needs to come to its senses before attempting to tell “OTHERs” what to do, not that we should ever be telling people in other countries what to do or pretending we have superior knowledge when we do not (and I find that label "Others" which the educational community tosses around far too frequently highly insulting for myself as well as for the other people it has come to represent, as I discussed in a previous blog). Cultural differences simply will never allow Western rules to be applied all over the world. It cannot and will not ever work. Joe was highly concerned about this very issue and he called over and over again in all of his work for the opening of our minds to diverse perspectives. We can no longer be the dictators of “WHAT IS” no matter how we might wish to rationalize it, define it, sanction it, put it in stone, or defend it; as long as we are using Western policy and practices, we are in deep trouble with the rest of the world.
c) We must learn to critically think via Joe's formulation of a complex criticality. As I asked in a previous blog, “Can we TEACH critical thinking?” No, we cannot teach it, but we can provide the tools and opportunities for people to develop these essential critical complex thinking skills. The other day, I described how this can be accomplished by exposing ourselves to difference, and cited Gregory Bateson’s work. And as Joe presents in his work, this exposure to difference is the central purpose and role of the critical bricolage.
d) These blogs can be used for a variety of purposes, depending upon the topic and presentation. Similar topics can be assembled to create something new or reworked (used as POETs to do additional research, employing the bricolage). They can be used to launch discussions of the issues they bring up. They can be used to look at issues from different perspectives to expand our thinking. They can be used as curricular material, and, indeed that is the most recent assignment handed down to me from my Master Teacher. He wants the site to offer FREE instructional materials, FREE downloads of academic papers, FREE images that people can use as they wish, and more. So, my future work will be dedicated to this highly important educational endeavor that promotes free flow of information and knowledge products.
e) Given that this is an evolving project, not all purposes have been identified.

I am putting this all out here because over the past few weeks, I have been harassed in quite illegal ways for presenting these perspectives. It is what Joe referred to as "dangerous knowledge" apparently. I am not interested in a legal battle, and like Joe, I feel all disagreements should be resolved from the basis of love, and I believe there is ample love to go around for everyone. Joe was a role model for that. We all have our own perspectives and we all have our freedom to express those perspectives without, what Joe called "ad hominen" attacks. The work I present here is the heart of Joe’s theory and philosophy as I interpret it. No one else that I know of is taking his work forward to the level of application in the ways he dreamed, namely for everyone, not restricted to academic research.  If there is someone who is, I would love to hear from them. I am going to do this work for Joe if it is the last thing I ever do and all indications that I have received is that this is the time to do it. I seem to have great support for what I am doing from beyond the veil of elite acemicics.

Joe had some very sweet words that speak to me, personally, in his book, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction. It makes me think we do have some kind of “soul” contract (which is merely one possible perspective on what my life mission has developed into, and one that particularly appeals to me) or, alternatively, he had simply predicted that a female was going to be the one who took his work forward to apply it. I can say this message is for me, personally, because I have not found anyone else out there researching and applying his work in the same manner I have been demonstrating, so I take his message here to heart. Here is what he had to say (and he always had the right words at the right time):

Critical knowledge production always involves pointing out faulty argumentation, unsupported generalizations, and unexamined actions of a knowledge community. What separates the critical sheep from the uncritical goats is that a critical pedagogy/epistemology also involves exposing the cultural, epistemological, and ideological assumptions that shape the knowledge individuals produce and the oppressive actions justified by such information. With such a task before us, I guess we just have to give up any aspirations to winning the Miss Congeniality contest. Such work will inevitably anger the guardians of the status quo. Relax, it’s our existential burden – go with it. (Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction, p. 176).

Note again, here that he is moving his work forward toward his critical complex epistemology. Clearly, this was a necessary move to rise above the limitations of critical pedagogy as it was being practiced in the United States. And it aligns with what Paulo Freire wished. He wanted his work taken forward. He, more than anyone, knew the limitations of his theory and did not wish for it to stagnate.

Well, I have a meeting with my Master Teacher, so I’ll see what words of wisdom he has for me. I don’t know what I would do without him.

Primarily, he is interested in my development of the free instructional materials. Check the Free Curricuar Materials page today; I have posted an intereting curricular item and will do this on a regular basis now. It shows how I have used my blogs to develop the instructional acitivity. I have much material and many ideas to work with and it is just a matter of writing them up and posting them. Note that I will not be categorizing these by age or ability levels. Also, that I take Joe's recommended ecumenical approach (as presented in his bricolage book with Kathleen Berry) that values learning about religions and respecting the beliefs of others, which of course, included Christianity. Most activities are geared for any level and are easily adjustable for -- or by the learners -- teachers and learners are perfectly capable of making these sorts of decisions. Aside from this, he has given me some direction for my dissertation, which I will reserve comment on at this time. He thanked me for staying so willing to “do it all” as he put it and he said that there will be more help coming my way to assist with the many projects on my plate. His clue for the song for today was “too few choices in an infinite world.” I did the search on YouTube and it brought this video game up. I am not into video games, so I do not feel qualified to interpret it. My teacher, since these blogs are designed for a diverse audience, likes to put out diverse music and of course, diverse perspectives. So I have provided his choice for today without interpretation. I really liked the music he gave me last night (four songs total). I have included my favorite from the four, below, after the game video.

Ever feel like you are on overwhelm? Ever feel like all of the gates, doors, and windows to opportunity are closed and locked up tight? Last night as I was getting ready to go to bed, it was MAX OVERWHELM. I have so much on my platter: I have to “fix” one website, plan out and write the content for another website, write this blog and curricular materials among other stuff, manage a growing business, and write a dissertation.  So I was feeling overwhelmed last night when I went to bed and I don’t know what happened in my dream life (I can imagine all of my dream friends and I had gotten together to plan all of these tasks I have going), and I awakened this morning past overwhelm and into that negative space where one wonders -- is all of this even possible?

Last night, I guess my teacher wanted to at least try to cheer me up, so he told me to focus on enjoying the process and to not stress about it. His clue for my goodnight song was “meet in bed.” This is not at what one might think. I plugged the words into YouTube and here is what came to the top.

As you can see, some cute little kitties need a home. It does remind me of the CRITICAL KITTIES that have been let out of the bag. If you are not “up” on the critical kitty, you can review here: critical kitty. Someone needs to adopt these cute kitties and take them home. This video was just posted on May 18, 2010. My Master Teacher really keeps up on stuff, even poor little kitties that need a good home. I hope YouTube finds them all good homes; they are so cute.

I think the main message to take from this video and reminder is what Joe said about the critical kitty:

“With criticality, the cat gets out of the bag. With the critical kitty sitting in our laps we begin to understand the way the matrix is loaded, the deck is stacked, socio-political reality is constructed. Indeed, a critical complex epistemology/politics of knowledge can help us gain new levels of consciousness and in the process, change the world” (Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction, p. 177).

By exposing just how the deck is stacked against us in our efforts to escape the dramas and power games around us, we also expose ways to get through or around the few spaces there are. It isn’t easy, though, and it can take one’s sense of optismism and hope down when we continually run up against obstacle after obstacle. And sometimes we just have no choice but to blast through, much the way Joe did with his book, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction. Still, it is my belief that our best option is what Doreen just happened to bring out in her oracle card reading today, so I have included that here. We need to work from the bottom and totally cut our ties and dependence on those institutions that are stealing our very souls.

This morning I awakened feeling the futility of it all. Those in power have created so many obstacles for everything you want to do: you must pay this fee or that fee, get this license or that license, you can do this, but you can’t do that….the powers that be have everything so locked up tight and under control it feels hopeless at times. But it helps to remember that critical kitty and keep it on our laps. I think my teacher's advice to rescue a kitty so that we can keep that kitty on our lap was great advice. It is also a demonstration of symbiotic relationships in action.

I was still feeling down when I met with my Master Teacher this morning. Well, he always knows exactly what to say to cheer me up and much of his communication is in the form of music. I am including it here because I believe that many people out there can benefit from this little pep talk he gave me. It is very powerful and uplifting.

First, he told me everything will come together divinely and to stop worrying about the money and people who choose to harass me. The power of love is on our side. I think this is an important thing to remember: the work we choose should be done out of love for humanity and to help other people, if only by providing them an example of the possibilities. That should be our primary focus, and we need not focus on the money we can get from doing our work. He has told me many things about this and I have had lessons from other great Master Teachers as well. I want to express my gratitude for their help because I have come a long way in changing how I view my work and money.

Then he encouraged me, advising me as to the important, priority tasks and he said he knows that I can do this. The work I have chosen, he told me, will serve to comfort many people. He reminded me we should always be proud of our heritage and share that with other people because, in this way, we help them find their pathways to greater happiness and peace.

He also said there will be a lot of money down the road in what I have chosen to do. We are creating our own future, and we can create it as we choose, but if we start living that future as if we have already created it, already a “done deal,” then our imagined future will manifest that much sooner. He said that it is “easier said than done,” and he told me “if anyone can do it you can.”

Those were such uplifting words for me. Of course, we have three songs here to look up on YouTube:  “done deal,” “easier said than done,” and “if anyone can do it you can.” As I have learned, there are additional messages to me in the songs he leads me to. Searching on these key words brought up the following very relevant songs. I do hope that people who are struggling and wanting to break free from the boss man or the grips of poverty can gain a sense of strength and hope from today’s blog and this high impact music.

"done deal" The Lyrics

Do You Ever Feel Like you’re Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places?

This question came to me (and the song below was handed down to me) as I was reading a newspaper geared for “Seniors” and the “Baby Boomer” generation. I was glancing through the “Seeking Friendship” advertisements as it appears there are so many people – in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s who still have not found LOVE. It’s kind of sad that our society does not allow the free flow of love and these people have spent their entire lives looking for that “one true love” and are still looking. Clearly, they have not found it or they would not be placing these ads. The reason being, love transcends space and time and it is there for us all. One advertisement reads, “seeks new soul mate” and another one, “in search of non-smoking slender soulmate.” Is this the right place to seek a soul mate? Who knows; maybe they are onto something. It is a good sign though, that deep inside we all seem to know there is a special someone out there for us and we do not need to give up looking for that special person. Personally, I know who my true soul mate is, so I am not ISO (in search of), thank goodness. But, what can I do to lend a hand to those who are in search of soul mates? Do I have something to offer those people? This is something that I keep questioning myself about – are we looking for love in all of the wrong places? And then yesterday I took a Nature Walk, and I found signifiers of love right out in the open for all to see. All we need to is open our eyes and our creative imaginations.

I remember as a child I loved being outside. One of the things I loved to do was to try and “see” things in the clouds, but it was hard because the clouds were always moving. (Did you ever do that as a child?) So a great activity is to have children do exactly what I did on my nature walk – take pictures of the clouds. Don’t try to see anything in them while taking the photos – just let the cosmos (or “chance” or “coincidence”) work with you and snap random photos. Check out the photos I took!!! They are incredible!

NOTE: NONE OF THESE PHOTOS HAVE BEEN CROPPED OR ENHANCED.

OMG!! When I was looking through the pictures of flowers I had taken, I found some more cool things in the clouds. Check ‘em out. Look at the very bottom of the sky on this picture. It's Eros again, and this time he is lying on top of - or next to - Psyche and kissing her (you can only see a portion of Psyche's lit up face). You can see the back of Eros' head on the left between the two trees and his body lies across the picture just above the trees and houses. Right above the couple is a white rabbit looking down on them, a symbol of fertility.

 

And this picture is so cute! It’s an adorable cherub who’s laughing because he has his wings on backwards -- either that, or he's happy because he's getting his wings since it looks like a big hand is holding the wings out toward the cherub. Look for the big smile and his angel wings.
 



This one shows a set of hands clasped together on the left of the cloud formation. It was the first picture I took when I went outdoors, so the sun was still shining, and it shows the approaching storm clouds. Maybe the hands represent the hands of the creator of all of these amazing images in the clouds.




This one shows Hermes on his horse with a huge quill in his hand. Hermes was a powerful writer and messenger, thus the significance of a very large quill/pen to write his message. The philosophy he lived by was that the pen is mightier than the sword. It really is in this image! There is so much to know about Hermes, I really encourage people to research this Greek God. I did not know anything at all until I read Joe's books and he often mentions Hermes. The more I research Hermes, Hermetics, and even related secret societies, the more I learn.




This photo, I call the MSYTERY photo. I know there is something there, but I am not seeing it. Perhaps you can identify an image or images in this one.




And finally, the grand finale, this last photo I took is a Heart in the Clouds -- yes, we can find love if we just open our minds and hearts -- and THE (INFINITE) SKY IS THE LIMIT.

Interestingly, I only snapped a total of seven photos of the sky (which are all included in this blog) and they ALL show something (what are the odds of that happening?) Also, I will note that there are other images in these photos that I have not yet identified, and perhaps you will be able to see them. As Joe always said in his work, everything must be interpreted, and cloud formations are no different. We all see differenlty, we all have our own perspectives and biases, and to keep our mental processes functioning, we are best served by finding and embracing multiple interpretations. These photos would make a great classroom discussion (online or offline) just by having people share what they see in them and what meanings they attribute to them. Since my name means Psyche....well, I won't get into my personal interpretation of these clouds, but it does seem highly significant that the universe or cosmos or the gods chose to reveal these images to me....and I have put them to the test and so far everyone I have shown them to clearly sees the images. So there you go. Life is magical and the universe is generous in the gifts it hands down to us if we are receptive.

Oregon has some "far out" clouds, I’m telling you; they are more "far out" than I remember seeing during my childhood. I really think we have reached the fourth dimension here, or I would not be seeing all of this interesting stuff in clouds that do not look “real” in the Fidurodian sense of the word. They are “hyper-beautiful” and so are all of the flowers I took photos of. Maybe this is what is meant by “Colors of the Wind” (I love this song and it has some valuable messages).

I would ask, is Love a “thing?” I think not. Attempting the feat of mentally processing love as a “thing,” however, is a valuable exercise. Why? Because it is clear that much of Western-influenced science and education, to the detriment of humans thus causing much emotional pain and suffering, makes this very drastic error of classifying complexities and processes as things. While it is much more complex than this, the mind can be conceived of interrelating parts that interact in such a way, that, as Joe always stated it, “the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.” Bateson, in his book, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (2002) conveyed this concept by stating:

I shall unhesitatingly say that the aggregate is a mind and shall expect that, if I am to understand the aggregate, I shall need sorts of explanation different from those which would suffice to explain the characteristics of its smaller parts (p. 85).

Bateson suggests mental processes are sequences of interactions between the parts and occur in the presence of difference. How does the concept of “difference,” which Joe wrote a great deal about, fit into this picture? Difference cannot be located in time or space and therefore, it cannot be viewed as a “thing.”

In education, which is our relevant topic in these blogs, we have come to view learning as the accumulation of “facts.” One way we view difference is in terms of what we do not know as compared to what we need to learn thus, we focus on learning facts, rather than processes or taking in the complexities of relationship (another concept Joe has woven into his theory). This illustrates the mistake of thinking a complex process (the human mind) is the object of difference. The mind is a complex aggregate which we cannot define as a “thing.” We can only say that the brain is a thing, however the mind is not that simple. Yet, in education we treat the mind (and consciousness) as some simple object. Knowledge is “out there” and must be brought into the mind – thus, the goal is to minimize the difference between what we call knowledge and what the learner knows. This is the wrong way to view difference. It objectifies the human and projects the source for responding to difference outside the complexity of mental processes. In other words, it takes the view that when we (e.g., teachers, administrators, gatekeepers) switch on the light (by providing sanctioned “knowledge”), we have the power to control that light and we are ignoring the fact that the energy for the light is always there and all we are doing is opening a switch to allow the flow of, for example in the case of the light switch, electricity.

Thus we have two systems operating. There are those who sit at the switch and expend their energy controlling whether the light flows or not. And the other system is the light which flows when the switich is open. The second system can run up against gates and try to blast them open if there is enough energy, or, alternatively, find other openings and cracks that allow the energy to flow through. Bateson puts it like this:

In life and its affairs, there are typically two energetic systems in interdependence: One is the system that uses its energy to open or close the faucet or gate or relay; the other is the system whose energy “flows through” the faucet or gate when it is open” (p. 95).

Joe talks about this process a lot in his book Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction, describing how FIDUROD operates as system to open and close the spigot for knowledge.

OMG, I don’t know how or why I am on this topic. I ended up having to meet with my Master Teacher this morning for clarification. We also had met last night (all night, I think, but I don’t remember everything). I do know he gave me this song last night, "Love is a Wonderful Thing" which is very sweet.

Morning Meeting With My Master Teacher

I remember reading something in Bateson's book about how “like” systems congregate, thus, like minds come together. I thought that was very interesting because it would explain things like soul mates and how people work together and such….but I digress. I asked my Master Teacher, what is all of this about? Clearly, I have much more reading and understanding to process here. He said not to worry, just provide a simplified version, so that was what I tried to do. I am sure I will come back to this topic again sometime and pull it all together and if there are misconceptions I will clear them up. That is what’s so great about Joe’s critical bricolage. You can start out by just writing a Point of Entry Text (POET) and then take it from there, always knowing it can continue because we cannot ever reach some final conclusion – as Bateson put it, the purpose of science (and thus, research and learning) is to probe, not to prove. Far too many of us have this gross misconception that science and research is out to PROVE something. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When I consulted with my teacher, he said not to get too deep into this topic today – I think I have already covered more than enough; there is so much more. In summary (as I learned from my teacher):

We do not utilize difference appropriately. We focus (as in education today) on the material difference and this is an arbirtrary proposition that is not in any way related to the scientific explanation for the processes that occur between the relationships between differences. This has us fabricating labels to explain and categorize differences and annihilates the mental processes that are triggered (as Bateson describes) by differences. We are training up DROIDs by this process – this grotesque error in the way we view difference.

I am going to drop this topic for now. It is way over my head. After we discussed Bateson’s work, my teacher encouraged me to move forward with a very special project, it is going to be a new website. He talked about letting my ideas flow so that my creativity is unleashed (I think this relates to the discussion on difference). Indeed, he told me that it is exposure to difference that allows our internal (already existing) creative energies to flow freely. Anyway, he told me that he knows this project will be “dynamite” and of course, that has to be a song, so here is the first song to the top on a YouTube search.

"dynamite"

That reminds me, last night after our meeting, he gave me four songs. He told me to “go to bed” and he signed off with “sleep tight,” “dream sweet,” and “yours.” Below are the songs that popped to the top on YouTube for these search terms. I have yet to figure out how he comes up with so much music and why. I was reluctant about posting so many songs, but this morning he told me "I do hope you will include those songs....hey, I went to a lot of trouble getting those." So, I guess I have to keep my teacher happy. Isn't that part of the learning process?: we learn what keeps our teacher happy and we do those things so that we get good grades, within reason, of course, and only when we know that our teacher has our best interest at heart. That's it for today, from this country hick girl and remember: difference is what creates mental processes or thinking. The greater the differences (in quantity and quality), the more mental processing we undergo, which is a good thing because it moves humanity forward. Heaven forbid should we all become DROIDS. In respectful honor of my teacher, here is his music:

"go to bed"

 

“sleep tight"

 


“dream sweet”

 

“yours.”

Well, this is exciting news! Just like Lauren Gorgo predicted yesterday, we do not need to DO anything major to break free from or cut loose from the old and move to the new.  Or I should say within the message she relayed from our good friends, the Pleiadians, we were informed that we do not need to do anything to “get out of this place.” Relative to yesterday’s blog, these were lyrics Joe had included in the title of his discussion about our need to move toward the critical complex epistemology (knowledge). I recommend reading that section (pp. 57-59) because Joe had a lot to say that relates to yesterday's and today's blog. He was fed up with the lack of affect in academia and how hurtful the social world is. You just have to read this section: It is so powerful and his creativity was out the roof (I love it!!!) He also calls for a revolution "in the way we see the world and produce knowledge about it" (p. 58). Clearly, I am a part of that revolution. I am probably more fed up than Joe was or I just have less patience than he had.

You will want to review my blog for yesterday and Lauren's blog that I had included to gain the full significance of this for everyone (including me) who has felt like they have been beating their heads against a brick wall. We really need to take time for passionate enjoyment of sensual and creative moments and let life flow.
 
I was also happy to learn from Lauren that purportedly, the Pleiadians are now saying it is no longer necessary to keep their involvement under wraps. We can talk about it now whereas in the past it was dangerous. They are the love people of the universe and I feel a great affinity for them. They are here with us, among us, and in us to help all of us on this planet move up in our evolutionary development, particulary in our greater awareness, consciousness, and ability to love. Call me crazy, if you wish, but we need "saviors," although they would protest profusely over being conceptualized as saviors. They are just an advanced people who want to help and there is a symbiotic interrelationship between earthlings and the Pleiadians. In fact, many of us are descendants from long ago. Some of the indigenous cultures of the world know this and seem to have more knowledge about them than wee Westerners (and, no, that was not a typo). It is clear to me, given the condition of societies and the world, we need this assistance and we should be grateful for receiving the benefits of their advanced evolutionary development and knowledge. (Ain't "imagination" great?)

Enough of that, I just provided more fuel for people to call me crazy but that’s ok. We who have major disagreements over such issues will soon be departing and going our separate ways and that’s a very good thing. That is the “breaking free” and “cutting loose” which Lauren conveyed in her blog. It cannot happen soon enough for most of us, I am sure. And in relation to Lauren’s message stating that we really do not need to do anything to force the new to manifest, yesterday after posting my blog, I had a truly amazing and miraculous experience that confirms exactly what she had contended. Suddenly, supports are kicking in bigtime and everything is in perpetual motion. It is the beginning of that perpetual revolution.

Thus, I will get back to the topic of changes that I have been mentioning in the last two blogs. My Master Teacher stated that these blogs and this website will be taking a turn; although it is less a turn than it is more action relevant to the move to a critical complex epistemology, is how I would frame it. The clues are already on the website and it is just a matter of allowing things to flow forth.  I have great faith that in simply enjoying my life and doing the creative things I love, beautiful things will evolve out of it. We do not need to control this process. We simply need to free up our minds, bodies and souls for what many creative people call “flow.” It works. While we are rowing DOWNstream (remember to Row, Row, Row Your Boat: Gently Down the Stream), and are no longer struggling trying to get upstream to force our dreams to come true, magic happens. Divine gifts can be passed down to us when we are no longer fighting the battle. It works. I see it daily in my life and yesterday I had a huge confirmation of that…and so, I will be rowing gently as the loving and peaceful stream flows along.

My Meeting With My Master Teacher
Yesterday, my teacher was beginning to provide details about all of these changes and my role in making them happen and I was expressing my feeling of being overwhelmed. As the music in yesterday’s blog indicated, he just basically said to “get with the groove,” which gave me another song. In my book, getting with the groove means you take time to dance and play and you don’t worry about how it’s all going to happen. It makes me feel sorry for all of those project managers who struggle with plans, lists, deadlines, blueprints, and budgets. They are a prime example of trying to row upstream and as a result they seldom meet their artificially determined deadlines or budgets.
 

So yesterday, sure enough, before the day was over, a divine assistant was sent my way. I am so excited. Now I know this works – I understand how people at the bottom can rise up out of the ashes like the great phoenix. I love that symbolism and in fact, a very talented graphic artist friend (a member of my Critical Knowledge Network) is designing a logo for me of the great phoenix rising and it is going to be very special.

Today, my teacher simply told me it is time to finish clearing out the old and reorganizing for the new. Again, like Lauren, he emphasized that I do not need to take great actions all at once. I love the way he described doing the things you enjoy and allowing things to evolve: “A little spice here and a little spice there.” (Oh that brings up Spice Girls.) He was talking about following a sort of flexible schedule which was devised with his assistance to make sure I always take time to enjoy the spicy things in life – doing the fun stuff along the way such as engaging in the arts and music, and allowing my mind to slow down long enough so that divine ideas can seep in. If our minds are so busy chattering, we lose our creative abilities.

Then, my teacher said some really nice stuff to me. He said he had wondered about me the very first time we met and had asked himself: "Is this too good to be true?" Of course, I wondered that exact same thing about him as welll until I got to know him. In our linear, 3d world, as he explained it, yes, it is too good to be “true.” And then he signed off for today with "Good, divine and wholely blessed" "We shall prevail" along with another sweet message which I will not reveal at this time, but it brought up the last song, below.

Wow, I have been blessed with five songs to look up: “Is this too good to be true?” “true” and "Good, divine and wholely blessed" along with “We shall prevail” plus a private sweet message. I will see what YouTube pulls up to the top with these.

“Is this too good to be true?” brought up the following song:

 

“True” brought up the following song:


















"Good, divine and wholely blessed" brought up the following song. You might want to click on this to get to YouTube and open up the lyrics that have been included. Kind of interesting.




“We shall prevail” brought up the following song: It looks like YouTube had been censoring this person, but the person prevailed since they were able to put all of their videos right back up on YouTube again, thus this is their victory video. I really don't think it is the American way to censor creativity.

 


And, last but not least, my private message brought up the following song:

Evidence for What a Woman Wants and a Short Break from Treasure Hunting Saturday, August 8, 2009

I have read Joe’s early works and they were SO perfect, although in my view, all of his work is perfect; some of it is just different and very creative as compared to typical academic writing. He always wrote well and put much care into his research, writing and teaching -- and the love shines through brightly. This song,”We Gotta Get Out of This Place” in my view may represent why, in his last books, his writing took a turn.  He was demonstrating with his writing just how we might escape. It is something I can relate to personally, because I also relate to this song and the feeling that you always have a stigma attached if you are a “hick” or a “hillbilly” (or is it because you are Scottish-Irish ?  – Honestly, I have not figured it out). I do know that it has never mattered how hard I tried or how perfectly I followed the rules of wherever I worked, I was still always at the bottom (first to be fired when there were layoffs; the last person to be believed by the boss when everyone else gossiped and lied, etc.). I have seen that over and over again in my own life. Joe has shared similar experiences in his work, especially from his childhood.

I really have gotten to the point that trying to do things “by the book” or per “status quo” just doesn’t matter anymore; as I have said so many times, when you are at the bottom, there is not much further to drop and so, I have chosen to do this “crazy” creative writing and I am taking it into my own idiosyncratic interpretation of what he referred to as “the fourth dimension” in his 2005 article about the critical bricolage. I'm not sure what he meant, so I made up my own interpretation. I awaken each morning and it is like I am that “Avatar” that some people in education seem to be writing about a lot these days. You know, the Avatar who is just not themself. I don’t know what I do in my dream life (except the nights I remember), but every morning words just flow out of me for these blogs and they often do not feel like my own words. I think I must plan them in my sleep or something and then voila! They just flow onto the screen. I still do my scholarly writing, of course, I have to, but it can be pretty dull, especially when professors dictate the topic. I wasted many years doing that and finally, I get to choose my own topics. My dissertation is going to be good -- I am going for the gold.  I can completely relate to Joe who clearly pushed the envelope with his creative, yet scholarly, insightful, and knowledge-constructing writing. Of course, no one could ever be match for Joe, but I figure I can keep trying, in my own way of course.

My guess is he, as I am, was a little bored with the formal, stuffy academic style (especially third person, which he often mentioned in his work). I find it very difficult to sit through an entire long-winded article these days, especially when I become disgusted with the obvious obfuscation (isn’t that what they call an oxymoron?  It really is not hidden from me anymore, after reading Joe’s work.) Anyway, obfuscation was one of Joe’s favorite words, and I can certainly understand why – it has to be if you read very many articles. It is amazing how many people in education talk about ascension, 2012, and heaven on earth and much more, all cloaked in ambiguous terms and yet educators laugh at, scorn, and stifle the “lower class” people for talking about these things. Heaven forbid. Worse, some educators support the media's deceptions in the way they present “knowledge” and do not encourage learners to gain other perspectives on what is really happening. There is knowledge for the elite and "knowledge" for the masses. Joe just put everything out there creatively in his last few books. He has written some fantastic works that are ahead of the times so they will be useful for many years to come. Joe covered the gamut when it comes to education and he covered it well. His work will not be obsolete any time soon, if ever.

I think he wanted to have a lot fun while he was doing his good work, which is another reason he may have included the fun stuff. Of course, when he needed to, he wrote in that formal academic style, but I am sure he had great fun putting together his amazing last works in which he used his superb phenomenological, polysemic, and hermeneutic skills along with his advanced science knowledge. 

And so, just like the song says, he moved away from “this place” (this stuffy academia) for a better life with critical complex epistemology, with some girl. I am sure he enjoyed writing his last books very much. I hope he enjoyed writing them as much as I enjoy reading them and each time I pick up one of his books, the magic and joy that I experience when I uncover another gift within a gift he has left us.

As he explained on page 64, “A critical complex epistemology constructs hot knowledge (conocimiento caliente, connaissance anime) ready to work its magic on its readers. It is unafraid of its own erotisicm, commitment to resistance, and vaudevillian recognition of the humor of dominant cultural gravitas.”

His work is truly magic and very erotic. Reading his books opened my mind to deciphering all of the obfuscated knowledge other edcators put out there.  I thank Joe for blasting open the doors to creative, fun, sexy, and musical research, learning, and writing – and for making my life a better life.

Morning Meeting With My Master Teacher
My teacher covered so much this morning. The mission is taking a new turn as I mentioned yesterday, but the “gang” is still working out all of the details.  I feel overwhelmed because it is clearly more work than I can do on my own. When I asked him how I was going to get all of this done by myself, he gave me a song: “Get in the groove, Babe.” This upbeat drum solo came up, which is so appropriate -- it makes a person want to move.

 

That’s it for today. There will be changes coming (as Sam Cooke sings) and they are good changes, but I am still somewhat in the dark about what they entail. I did receive the following message from "my favorite people" today (I enjoy Lauren Gorgo's writing) and it looks like the hardest part is almost over and we just need to be patient a little longer. What she is saying here may jive with what many people are experiencing right now, so I am including the entire blog, because it is very uplifting for those of us who are struggling and wondering how we can rise to the occasion. There is really nothing we need to do, as this blog points out. It becomes much like I have discussed in some previous blogs: We just end up spinning our wheels. Patience.

Breaking Free

How's your May been so far?  Anything like you expected?  Well, that is, assuming you have any expectations left in this process.

If May is a messy month that you just can't figure out how to clean up, then welcome to the misery of "breaking" free!

We are in the process of literally...and in some ways, suddenly... breaking off from our old selves & lives, dismantling the remaining outworn vestiges of our past and with seemingly no support to fix anything...shocker.

If this is happening for you, if the bottom is falling out of your life and you see/feel/know of no way to fix what's broken, no worries...new supports are always on the back end of the dismantling process, but first we are forced to sit still one final time and take solid inventory of our lives and wants, all that needs to go, and all that needs upgrading.

In other words...this is IT...the last hurrah from this insane cycle to deal with, face, release, and break free from our mis-created goo before a new cycle of creation begins.

I am hearing that the most important thing to consider during this time is:  "What do I want for my new life?"

Now, granted we have been pondering, imagining, speculating and contemplating these desires for a decade however, at this time...from mid-May until July...we need to revise our desires one last time to be sure they are the absolute highest version of what we want as we begin to take the logical steps to creating and implementing them in physical form over the next several years.

This breaking free business has been no joke this month...especially with all the grounded and earthy celestial support, much in our physical lives is undergoing radical and rapid transformation.

On a personal level, I will share how these "wrapping-up" energies are manifesting in my own life:

Since the beginning of May my push lawnmower died; my riding lawnmower exploded; the bottom of my Jetta fell off on a highway; my brand new computer...that many of you helped me to purchase!...now needs repair; a class action suit for my car just arrived requiring me to replace the carpet & padding (at my upfront cost) before July so I can file a claim to get reimbursed; I received a loan modification settlement for my home which is in the negotiation stages; my student loans just came out of forbearance after 15 years of deferment, and then I got summonsed for jury duty for the last 2 weeks in May during what was going to be the launch period of my brand new website that I have been working on for 2+ years...(more on that coming soon!)

All this piled high on top of that giant Nagasaki-like dirt pit I call a yard from the broken water pipe disaster that I wrote about this past winter...see photo for effect:

Cutting Loose

Stabilizing

What Now?

What Next?

Physical Happenings

Yesterday afternoon, my Master Teacher dropped in and I was not doing much, so he told me that I really need to get moving on my “gig,” as he put it. This funny video came up when I searched it on YouTube:

 

Something tells me there are messages there, but I am so new at this interpretation thing that I don’t know what they are. I guess, coming from the lowest of lows socioeconomic standing, I am just suffering from a Cambell's Condensed Canned Soup of an education (yuk, that soup is nasty). I think he was just trying to get me to laugh; it is funny.

Other than that, I am supposed to finish up a summary of the last few days of the Epistemological Road Trip to Tennessee and back. The last installment was back on Sunday, May 9, 2010. On that day I had summarized what had transpired on day 10 which was Tuesday, April 6, and the fact that I had somehow quite miraculously landed in St. Joe’s again for the evening. That was also the day we learned of the sad tragedy of the lost miners in West Virginia.

The next day (Day 11), Wednesday, April 7, after all of the signs and signals I had encountered on this epistemological road trip, I was beginning to feel like “there is something going on here,” as I discussed in the blog for that day: Signs and Symbols: What Do They Really Mean? Thursday, April 8 (Day 12), I had written about Sam Cooke again in We Can Never Love Too Much because I had had a very vivid dream the night before about Sam. On Saturday, April 10 (Day 13), my blog was Let It Flow and it discussed how we really do not need to teach with a script. If we are going to address learner needs, it is important to take a more improvisational approach. This is what Joe’s theory, the critical bricolage, emphasizes. This does not mean we can be lazy and not plan at all, but we need to be very knowledgeable in many domains and disciplines as well as flexible so that we can best “educe” rigorous learning in response to individual interests and talents – which, of course, we cannot view as static – like everything else, these are changing and evolving as learners progress. Finally, on the last day, Sunday, April 11 (Day 14) of course, I reached home, stopping at the beautiful Multnomah Falls on the way through. My blog that day was about Gathering Information, Relaxing, and A Tribute to the One I Love. As was highlighted by Doreen in that day’s blog, my trip involved collecting information which would be used at a later date. And I did, indeed, gather a lot of information on the trip.

The entire epistemological road trip was so much fun! I think Joe was onto something when he said that we sometimes need to take our research on the road (see page 19 in Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction). I learned a lot and I am looking forward to synthesizing all of the knowledge I gained on the trip, along with further analysis by threading Robert Moss’s work through the account. I will, of course, thread Joe’s theory, as well as other theories through the narrative. I really think there is a lot to learn here and road trips are such a great way to learn a vast amount of information, but it is definitely beyond the scope of these blogs to carry this forward. I think a further analysis can show how valuable field trips are for students, and it is sad that these days field trips rarely happen. My future discourse on this will either be in the form of a paper or it will go into my dissertation. So, the next step in this bricolage project is to thread through it with Robert Moss’s work, particularly from his book, The Three “Only” Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination.

This morning, My Master Teacher had all kinds of music for me. We both decided to keep today’s blog upbeat since I honestly do not wish for any kind of negativity here and neither does he (although, I realize that sometimes, for the greater good, it becomes unavoidable). Beginning tomorrow we will be heading in another new direction with the blogs, but I was not told what that would be; I was simply told, “It’s going to be a surprise. I know you want to be prepared for it, but there is no preparation for what’s about to come.”

Well, I hope it’s good, because like my teacher, I do not like negativity. As if to pacify me today, he gave me a bunch of songs that are very uplifting and inspirational. Here’s how he put it:

We need a “sweet sugary song” for today to keep things on the “up and up.” That should “do it” for you. You laugh; you know the “do it” song….have a “supercalifragilistic day.”

All of the words in quotations were plugged into YouTube and below are the first songs to the top -- with the exception of the "do it" song. That song has been used several times in my blog, so I knew immediately which song he was referring to (he knows I love that song. I used it to motivate me when I was writing the answers to my comp exam questions back in November, 2009).

"sweet sugary song"

Several of my Facebook friends forwarded emails to me they had received yesterday from Joe L. Kincheloe’s Facebook (Joe passed away in 2008, so they could not have come from him). These messages seemed to have been sent under some kind of guise, because they were asking for friendship, but at the same time threatening court action and advising them to tell me to stop writing about Joe.

Excuse me; it is not illegal to write about Joe or cite his work -- and I only have very good things to say about him. I loved him and I know his work will change education. What all of this sounds like to me is a prime example of that very diabolical educational doublespeak Joe wrote about so often. Of course, Joe could not have possibly sent these emails out and he would have never said these incriminating and false things about me on the premise of friendship. It’s ludicrous.

I was aware that critical pedagogy as an ideology/religion or any of the other various formats it may take, depending on who you speak to, was suffering setbacks, but this seems like a really weird way to try and recruit people and the worst possible time to be doing it. Clearly, they can see this. Who wants to be a part of a group or ideology that claims to be for freedom, democracy, equal rights and freedom of expression and yet they go around telling people to shut up and attempt to destroy their career before it even gets off the ground.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not against critical pedagogy per se and there are many great people who follow the ideology and are using it to help others. The fact is, I believed in it wholeheartedly when I was working with Joe. Joe was all for critical pedagogy, of course; but a new refined and improved critical pedagogy – particularly one in which people work out of LOVE and where people can rise above their pettiness so that beautiful artwork that comes from the heart is appreciated.  That’s what critical pedagogy is about. It is about everyone having a voice, even a country hick girl like me or an “Appalachian hillbilly” as Joe described himself. However, this action is a prime example of a people proclaiming to be for freedom especially freedom of expression based on “radical love,” multiple ontologies, social positions, political views, cultural practices, etc. etc.) of just how hateful certain players can become.

I have stated many times, and it is in the disclaimers that I present MULTPLE PERSPECTIVES on this website, not all of them are necessarily my own even, so that people, including myself, once and for all will open up to the idea that we do not all have to think alike or be alike. To call someone “unbalanced” (which is not even grammatically correct) simply because they choose to put these perspectives and critiques out here defies logic – even Cartesian logic. To claim to be critical pedagogues and write virulent emails and Facebook postings because someone is expressing themselves openly and creatively, exploring various ontologies, and critiquing critical pedagogy is a magnitude of hypocrisy I have never seen anywhere else in my entire life.

I just wonder WWJD? (What Would Joe Do?)

The people who are doing this to me clearly have not read Joe’s work. They are defending their own agenda.

Joe only had GOOD things to say about me. For example, here is what he told me in one of the very last emails he sent me -- it was written because I apologized to him for posting artwork to a blog I had written for his website when it turned out someone wanted it removed for reasons that, frankly, I really did not understand, but I went along with it for Joe. I felt so bad because I never wanted to cause Joe problems or stress, ever, so I took the artwork down immediately FOR JOE – and sent him an apology. I knew his health was not good and the entire time I knew him, I was conscientious of that fact and wanted to help him with his project, and not do anything at all that might cause him undue stress. When I posted the artwork, I had no knowledge of the personal issues between certain people in “critical pedagogy” which would prohibit the posting of this very beautiful artwork I had done that related to the topic of my blog. I apologized profusely to Joe and he wrote back to me, stating:
 

 "you are so much appreciated and so brilliant and wonderful, there is absolutely, positively no need for apology......you are a wonderful and treasured one. you have made such a powerful impact on not only the freire site but the crit ped community. you are doing and will do great things."

To my great and continuing sadness and trauma, that was one of the last emails I received from him. He died just a few weeks later. And no, I may never recover. Call me crazy for that, but I made a promise to Joe and I will keep my promise and that is to make sure the world knows his work and how to apply it in ways that he wished. As I had told him in response, I never want to disappoint him. Would he be disappointed with this website? HELL NO!! He is on the sidelines cheering me on and giving me strength.

Most people in critical pedagogy I have learned (after doing extensive research), have no clue what Joe’s work was about. People who do have a clue shun it and want to shove it in the corner. Is that why the paperback version of his book, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction is priced outrageously at $150 when he had his heart set on what he had worked so hard to get included in the contract -- “a less than $30” paperback that everyone can afford? It had taken him ten years of negotiation.

Joe wanted his work taken to the world.

Most people do not know that Joe wanted dreamwork incorporated into the curriculum. You do not have to read between the lines of his work to see that – you just have to open your mind to see the words and heed them. One of his greatest dreams was for people to learn, grow, and relate to each other through an open discussion of dreams and to realize the powerful knowledge one obtains by fully opening their mind to how we interact with the entire cosmos – the daily miracles, magic, guidance, knowledge, and the power of love that is readily available on a daily basis to each and every one of us if we open our minds to seeing it. It is only Western society where dreaming and noticing “coincidences” and “synchronicities” are akin to dirty laundry. Why is this? Critical pedagogy, at least Joe’s version of critical pedagogy has clear answers to the reasons. He discussed these issues in his work.

It is time for Western society to wake up to the fact that cultures everywhere are much smarter than we are. Who are we to be teaching the world? We white folks are the minority and the era of maintaining power over the majority is crumbling, thankfully, and will continue to crumble. Dreams, in many cultures, are a greater reality than this one we are being sold by those who wish to remain in power. YES! I dream of Joe and I dream of him often. I am not ashamed of that. In other cultures dreaming of someone is an HONOR and the people who have such dreams are respected, even Shaman if they are able to bring back special messages and knowledge. Joe cannot be in my dreams unless he chooses to be in my dreams. That is cosmic law and it is my belief; everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but I do not believe that the majority of the world is crazy and that Westerners are the only ones who are sane. Observing the horrendous actions taken (such as the nuclear bomb depicted in the video in Saturday's blog) clearly shows otherwise.

This website is an evolving educational and research project.
When I started it, I had no idea where I was going with it. As the very first blog indicates, I was being led; someone has been holding my hand. I simply followed. I had no idea what was happening to me – why was I having all of these dreams about Joe? Why was I seeing all of the synchronicities in my life as reported in the “treasure hunts” and the “epistemological road trips?” They seemed uncanningly familiar to what Joe had referred to as "postformal treasure hunts," but it was all new to me. Why was I being divinely guided to exact pages in Joe’s books for whatever I needed at any given moment? Why am I able to decipher hidden secrets in Joe's books that everyone else misses? Why do I seem to have extrasensory perception that I had not been aware of before? And there are many more questions. These things had never, ever happened to me before. Today, I have a little clearer idea and I know that it is related to my dissertation and incorporating dreamwork into education.  In my view, this research is quintessential for creating a world in which people can once again return to love-based relationships and in which learning is a daily, lifelong, exuberantly fun experience. Maybe it is not for everyone. Maybe it is not for you. But rest assured, there are many people who are suffering at the hands of the education they are being force fed who would not think twice about joining a program that honors them and their dreams.

This message is for those who continue to harass me: Stop threatening me, my loved ones, and my friends. Stop trying to intervene at the university with my work toward my PhD. Take me to court if you wish, if that is what you really want to do. I have said nothing derogatory about anyone and it can readily be shown that the work I am doing here is a scholarly application of Joe’s theory in support of what he was trying to accomplish. I have had and do have nothing but very good things to say about Joe, of course, I loved him and I still love him. Should anyone choose to go to court as I have been repeatedly threatened now, it should be known that there is ample evidence for a countersuit for defamation of character. I have no qualms about publishing on the web each and every nasty email that has been sent, although I will block out any derogatory statements about Joe (it appalls me that anyone who knew him and loved him would say anything negative about him). I will point out that I do not think it would look good for people who proclaim to adhere to an ideology that supports disadvantaged students to file suit against someone of my lower socioeconomic status simply for doing educational work she believes in, but it would not surprise me either, judging by some of the things Joe has revealed in his book. It would probably make a good news story, although I hate being in the spotlight. These sorts of behavior saddened Joe greatly, he has spoken of them, and they sadden me, too. Why can't people work together out of love and the desire to make the world better for us all? The answers, of course, are in Joe's book.

A piece of advice for those who do not understand the work here: take time to learn the difference between accounts of dreams, imagination, coincidences, synchronicities, fictive, fiction, and multiple forms of reality. Yes, I agree, coincidences can be amazing and even shocking (as Joe, himself, has written), eg., that my name means Psyche as I reported in my blog two days ago – although it should be noted that I am not out of touch with “reality” and in this dimension, I do not believe I am Psyche, folks – only in my dreams. It does make for an interesting storyline, though.

I am excited about moving forward with my research. I am also excited about the many numbers of people who ARE interested in what I am trying to accomplish by adding dreamwork as well as extreme creativity through the arts to the educational process (as was noted in yesterday’s blog with the analysis of the article by Han Gur-Ze’ev). I am excited and honored to have the opportunity to put Joe’s work out there in the way he dreamed so that learning can be “more fun than an amusement park ride” (Kincheloe, 2008, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction).

One piece of advice I can give at this time: For anyone struggling with these concepts, I recommend reading Joe’s book, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction from cover-to-cover. Even if you do not understand things as you are reading, just keep plugging through it. He has magically used his critical bricolage in creating this book such that when you are finished reading it, you will begin the most transformative journey of your life.

Meeting With My Master Teacher
I think my Master Teacher was just a little upset with me last night. He reminded me that when these terrible things happen, such as nasty email attacks sent to my dearest friends and family, that I should call on him or other members of the critical knowledge network, or “the gang” as they like to be called. And I just toughed it out, believing that I was alone even though I have been reminded over and over again that we are never alone. He kept the meeting very short, told me to get some sleep and signed off with “Peaceful dreaming.” Per routine, of course, this was a song to look up on YouTube and, quite appropriately it turned out to be a very short song because he wanted me to get some rest and probably be whisked away in my dreams for some counsel so that I would awaken refreshed and know how to tackle the vehement attacks.

This is the song that came to the top of the YouTube search on "Peaceful Dreaming"

 

I will take a break here – I am scheduled to meet with him and get his advice for the day. It is currently 8:30 AM.

It is now 8:49 and I had my meeting with my Master Teacher – short and sweet today. He said the blog is fine. I thought I should put more love into it, because, really, I am coming from a place of love. It breaks my heart to think about how many students have been harmed and continue to be harmed simply because they chase after knowledge and creativity. So, I am not fighting this for myself. I feel that it is a fight for so many people who fear speaking out. But my Master Teacher told me not to worry about inserting more love in the above post, or even images. It is important to get the message out and he said I have included “more than enough ‘tough love.’”

Other than that, he told me to do my Pleiadian “lightwork” (which involves very powerful methods for clearing out tension and emotions) and my exercises before I do anything else because, as he stated, “it will lift your spirit and clear the blocks.” So just as soon as I post this I will heed his advice. And then he went on to pick a song, as is always the routine. In relation to the song for today, he stated:

As far as a song to end the blog let’s just go with “the passing time the arrows will fly.” OK it doesn’t make sense collectively but if you take it apart it can be analyzed and together it pulls up the most fantastic song for what you are going through at the moment.
As is the procedure I have been using every day in these blogs, I plugged the entire phrase “the passing time the arrows will fly” to see what song comes to the top of the search. It brought this amazing song – which is as relevant as he told me it would be. Lest people doubt that I communicate with a Master Teacher who has great knowledge, much greater knowledge than I do (and because the Internet is a fractal which will bring up different results on different days) I am including a screen print of the search terms and the song that came up, which is as you can see, "Battle of Dreams." What could be more appropriate for today's blog?
 






















All I can say about this after listening to the song below and reading the lyrics, is that it is nothing less than THE POWER OF LOVE. Love transcends space and time. I should note that I am certain my teacher presents this as allegorical and it should not be interpreted as a threat in any way. We are peace-lovers. He just wants to make the point that I am not to give up the struggle for what is just and fair – and as the song ends, “of making the dream come true.”

What a coincidence! I was reading a new book I just bought by a dream specialist, Robert Moss. The book is called Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination, and Life Beyond Death, and what did I come across? PROOF. I came across PROOF that Joe did, indeed, predict the movie “humpday.” As I stated two days ago in these blogs:

Humpday is a real word because Joe used it on page 23 of The Sign of the Burger and he tells us what it means. He’s so sweet. He tells it in a way so we don’t feel dumb if we don’t know. Here’s what he said: “In the rural Tennessee mountain schools of the 1950s, Wednesday was ‘bean day.’ The dread of ‘humpday’ – too early in the week to permit the anticipation of the weekend…” So there you have it!!!

And then, in the PS I wrote:

"Onward and Upward!" Another coincidence appeared while I was reading Robert Moss’s book. I did not realize the true meaning of my name. I knew that Vanessa meant butterfly and that butterfly means transformation. But in his book Robert explains that across cultures butterfly means soul – so, my name means soul. What happened to soul? “Here I am.” Not only that, Robert Moss points out that “the Greek word Psyche means both ‘butterfly’ and ‘soul’ (p. 161). So my name also means Psyche! Oh wow, and so many people had observed that Joe demonstrated amazing love (Eros), as well as it is all through his work and forms the very foundation of his education theory. As Peter McLaren writes about Joe on his website, “his capacity for love was monumental.”

It is no wonder Joe earned the title “God of Love” or Eros in my dreams. And I guess it takes Psyche (soul) to recognize Eros. (Eros is the God Love and also means Cupid, by some accounts, which brings to mind Sam Cooke’s song that has come up in past blogs, “Cupid.") Me and Joe. Psyche and Eros. And what’s the deal with Hermes and Aphrodite? I know that Joe’s work clearly is the work of Hermes – but am I Aphrodite ("the goddess of love, beauty and sexual rapture")? Only in my dreams, of course. If we are going to dream, we might as well make them what Roberts Moss calls "big dreams." I just happened to come across this great bas-relief of the four of them. Eros and Psyche are leading the way for Hermes and Aphrodite.

I don’t know about you, but I have been STRUGGLING recently with so many things – getting back into a routine of exercise, playing music, working, eating right, etc. I was beginning to think I really need that knight on a white horse Joe talked about in his 2005 article conceptualizing the bricolage. I thought maybe it was the planet alignment or the retrograde that was holding me back. But today I was told that a new surge of energy is available for us all -- and I can actually feel it. Maybe it’s because the roses are blooming as I wrote about in yesterday’s blog and maybe it is something else. But whatever it is, today this new surge of energy is available and it will help us all get back on track.

I keep saying I will return to the Epistemological Road Trip that I took to Tennessee and finish that account (I left off with about three days remaining before returning home). However, I was told that this is Mother’s Day Week and I am to make it a vacation and to pick up where I left off on the trip on Sunday. That makes me wonder, what does “the gang” have in store for me today and Saturday? It should be exciting.

Here is what came up:

 

The First Yellow Rose bloomed on Father’s Day last year. I dedicated it to Joe in appreciation for all that he had contributed to education along with a special poem I wrote for him (in fact, I had planted four yellow rose bushes in his memory when I moved into my house in February 2009). Yellow roses signify spiritual power, wisdom and joy.

Well, it looks like this year, the gift has been returned to me more then 10-fold – lots of yellow roses blooming already and just in time for our new Mother’s Week Celebration!!

In yesterday’s blog I announced the new holiday format—Mother’s Day has been extended for a full week. Yellow Roses! What a wonderful gift in exchange for The First Yellow Rose I dedicated last year on Father’s Day. I must be doin' sumptin' right.

And this is significant. When the roses bloom, they magically release increased insight and knowledge for those of us who are receptive to that. I experienced it all last year and was sent out on many interesting and entertaining treasure hunts all summer and received many, many gifts. Already, the power is being felt. Yesterday, I was able to identify one of Joe’s predictions in his book, a movie that had not even been produced at the time he wrote his book (see yesterday’s blog and scroll all of the way to the end to read about it).

Oh, and about that very last song in my blog yesterday, the “hangin’ around” one that my Master Teacher gave me -- I figured it out, too!!! Someone is tired of “hangin’ around this old town.” The girl who got on the bus is me – and he finally decided to leave that old town and travel with me. How cool is that?

I have figured Joe was at least 100 years ahead of everyone else with his advanced theories and many people just are not ready for it. Some magic tricks are needed here. Perhaps we can speed up time a bit to catch up with Joe’s work or plant a lot more roses. We really do not want to leave anybody behind.

The following music for today was handed down to me. Not sure what they all mean. A lot of semiotics happenin' here. Everything is open for interpretation when it comes down to me from my Master Teacher.

Search term: “sleep”

Search terms:“dry the tears” (a healing song)

The mission continues, no matter how low the ride can get. It is depressing to look around and see that things are not changing fast enough especially in education. I notice this as I do my research. Some of the articles turning up are sad if they represent the direction education is heading. I even have troubling dreams about the status of things and how hurtful they can be to learners. It is especially hurtful when learners discover they have been deceived. I saw it so often with my own children and their public education. It becomes difficult to undo the damage.

What is really maddening is how people claim to be helping, but it becomes clear their real intentions are all wrapped up in ulterior motives, and not the love that Joe stressed was so important. I did come across an article by Joe that I had not read before (see References below). It was so passionate and I really recommend reading it. If we can insert the kind of love he talked about and demonstrated into education in all of its manifestations, whether formal or informal, there may be hope.

Of course, as Joe stated at the end of the article, “We are our own best hope.” And that truly is the bottom line.

And so, I know that what I am seeing right now at this moment is only temporary. I refuse to accept that these conditions can continue much longer. This assessment was reinforced this morning when my Master Teacher told me “patience is the magic word.” Of course, since he highlighted these specific words, I knew they were also the special music for me today. That’s the magic he always works and why I sometimes call him “the Magic Music Man.” His words always have multiple meanings, which is one thing I love so much about the way he teaches me. It really opens the doors, windows, and pathways to greater knowledge. Searching on YouTube, brought this cute, whimsical song to the top. I love it because it reminds me that we are not restricted to the reality that others dictate for us; we are free to imagine better places and different and interesting creations -- and most importantly --
we are always free to love.

Apples on the Lilac Tree
Sailboats in the sky
Stars are shining in the sea
You're the reason why

Apples on the Lilac Tree
Bluebells in the snow
Ringing out a rhapsody
I'm in love you know

Green Flamingos bend their knees
Dancing to a tune
Perfume floats along the breeze
And every month is June

When the magic moons aglow
We will always be
Where the Golden Apples grow
On the Lilac Tree

Where the Weeping Willows laugh
There's a kangaroo
Shouting to a pink Giraffe
That I belong to you

When the magic moons aglow
We will always be
Where the Golden Apples grow
On the Lilac Tree

This second song came to my attention when I located the above song. It is relevant because the topic of dreams has been and will continue to be very important as tools to help us create the realities of our future -- these happier, more imaginative, and whimsical realities that are filled with love. It is dedicated to my Master Teacher with love. That reminds me that my most very favorite movie ever was "To Sir With Love." There is a connection here, no doubt. You would have to know my true history and how long my Master Teacher has been working with me (from "kindergarten"). 

So this song is "To Sir With Love."

References and Credits

The article by Joe that I was referring to is “The Vicissitudes of Twenty-First Century Critical Pedagogy: A review of Han Gur Se’ev (2005) Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy Today: Toward a New Critical Language in Education." I will want to read Han Gur Se'ev's work because Joe had such high praise for it.

There is another article that reviews Han Gur Se’ev’s article by Tova Ya’akovy called “A Re-thinking of Critical Pedagogy: A Review of Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy Today: Toward a New Critical Language in Education."

The pink giraffe courtesy of Deviant Art

Tomorrow: The Epistemological Road Trip Continues (it ain’t over until it’s over).

This morning when I woke up, I was greeted by a sweet email from my daughter, who is clearly a member of my Critical Knowledge Network since she sent me this very appropriate and loving song in her email.

I also had some sweet gifts from other members: a coffee mug from my son, stating “World’s Greatest Mother.” And he fixed me dinner last night! A card from my other daughter stating, “You’re the World’s sweetest, kindest, nicest, most generous, supportive and loving Mom.” A phone call from my other son telling me he loves me and we had a great esoteric conversation that was very interesting. All of my children are members of my Critical Knowledge Network and they will be playing various roles as we move forward with the mission.

I also conversed with my Great Master Teacher last night. Unfortunately, I did not feel like talking with the “gang” because there are so many of them now and I was not feeling up to it. But they all understood and will talk with me just two per day all of this week (which started today). Last night my Master Teacher told me it is now time to do the work on my dissertation; the writing that is. I have been doing a lot of research. The gang has stakes in it and he told me that they are “all so thrilled that you are taking on such a complex and monumental project.”

And he left me with clues for a song by stating that they are all “standing beside you.” Well, that, of course means I have to look up “standing beside you” on YouTube and take the first song to the top.

Oooooh, what a beautiful song it is! I love it and it expresses my feelings so well. Once again, I am totally amazed with my Master Teacher and how he comes up with the perfect music for the occasion every time.

This morning, just as promised, two members of the Critical Knowledge Network team contacted me. First, was Sam Cooke. He wants me to buy a book right away that was written about him. I am to write to the author and see what documents he might be willing to share with me. He thinks the author probably will not be willing to share and so he wants me to find that out up front so that I can send for the police reports and other documents I need so that I have them when I get to that part of the dissertation -- if it is included in  my dissertation – it might be a separate project because I am using the critical bricolage for my research methodology, which is improvisational so we do not really know what I will include at the moment.

Sam gave me a song to look up: “Take wings and fly.” I feel bad because he probably wanted to give it to me on Mother’s Day and I was too out of it to speak to him yesterday. I will have to see what these lyrics bring up.

Next, my cos, Ralph spoke to me. He sort of reprimanded me for calling him Ralphie last time. He really despises that. I thought I could get away with it since Uncle Albert (Einstein) called him Ralphie, and I am his cousin after all. However, I will respect his wishes. He likes for me to call him cos and he calls me cos. Also, he likes RWE for Ralph Waldo Emerson. He wrote me a funny poem about calling him Ralphie:

It’s not my name,

Lovie, don’t play this game

I’m RWE

Can you not see?

(No, I can't see you, cos.) RWE is being kept in the dark about his role in this mission and so am I. He did say he hopes to provide me some "tantalizing poetry" along the way. If he wrote some of the previous poetry in these blogs, I have no doubt he will provide some very great poetry during this mission. He also gave me lyrics to look up a song: “Somewhere out there” and he said that I am going to love this song. We shall see. I’ll have to look it up. I hope it’s not “payback” for calling him Ralphie. My cos can be a pretty slick Hermes Trickster, himself.

Next, I spoke with my Master Teacher. He is so great. I have started on my dissertation – I wrote up a pre-proposal and asked him if the POET I am selecting is “correct.” He told me I could use any POET I wished. (A POET is a "point of entry text" which the dissertation launches from.) I asked him if I was heading in the right direction with my research and he answered “most assuredly.” He gave me these messages telepathically rather than in writing (it seems we are getting better at communicating that way, although we always have been very good at it). He said that soon I will be able to communicate to other members of the network that way and know who is communicating to me. He thanked me for talking to Ralph and Sam, who he called “the vocal ones.” There is something funny about that. He mentioned that with the lifting of the retrograde on May 11, things will really be taking off and there is money on the way to help fund my research. He does not want me to take any shortcuts or "cut any corners," as he put it. He wants me to purchase whatever I need to do this research. He specifically asked me to get the book about Sam and pull together some information about Einstein. It looks like this research project is going to rise to the fourth dimension somewhere along the way. You will have to read Joe's articles on the bricolage to understand what this means -- or wait until I finish my dissertation.

My Master Teacher also gave me another song for this morning with the search terms “Wonderful Day.”

I will look up all of these songs. It looks like it’s another “musical day.” They love to give me music on my special days.

From Sam: “Take wings and fly”
From RWE: “Somewhere out there”
From my Master Teacher: “Wonderful Day”

So, here we go with the search!

From Sam: “Take wings and fly”

Sam! This is so beautiful! Beautiful music, lyrics, singing, and video. Thanks, Babe. (Sam and I always call each other Babe or Baby, a term of endearment.)

Now let’s see if RWE is nice because it was my Mother’s Day music, or playin’ the Trickster.

From RWE, my cos: “Somewhere out there”

I will look this up right now. Oh, I LOVE this. (He SAID I would love it.) Only from my cos! (makes me cry, though).

And, last but not least, from my Master Teacher: “Wonderful Day”

Yes, “let love touch your soul” a divine message from a divine Master Teacher:

 

And may everyone “out there” “take wings and fly” so that they, too, can have a “wonderful day!”

Special thanks to all the members of my Critical Knowledge Network, or as they like to call themselves, “the gang.” I dedicate this song to all of you and to Louis, who has also joined our team. And in relation to the video with this song, as Sam sings, “A Change is Gonna Come.”

Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Blog

It’s interesting that Tuesday, April 6, 2010’s blog which was written during day 9 of my epistemological road trip was titled, “Dreams, Learning, and the Good Stuff.” This is so relevant today even. After reading Robert Moss’s books, (which he would probably say were provided to me by the "Library Angel"), I have a whole different perspective on my Epistemological Road Trip – as well as the cool Treasure Hunts I have had and have reported in these blogs, and it changes how I interpret my dreams. According to Robert, we are to view dreams in a more literal sense and view life in a more dreamlike sense….yes, indeed, we really have it backwards in Western “civilization.” I have to agree with Robert because, generally, my dream life is so divine (except when I have dreams within dreams, which Edgar Allen Poe has written poetry about). And so, next time around when I go back through this analysis of my road trip (much like threading through a Point of Entry Text or POET while employing the bricolage), I will take a more dreamlike perspective of it all. For now, I will continue on the same track as before. But I do have to say that Robert is “right on target” with what I have experienced; his descriptions match up with the things I have gone through the past year and a half. And he goes into great detail about other cultures, cosmologies, and ontologies to show that people the world over have a much different perspective about dreams than Westerners.

Another interesting thing that Robert talks about is how the “Trickster” plays a significant and powerful role when we travel (and how many times have I brought up the idea of Trickster in these blogs??? How many times did Joe mention the Hermes Trickster in his work?). Robert cites many of his own personal examples of how when his travel plans got changed up, there was a divine reason for this happening and also how the “Trickster” can be so funny at times by bringing up repeating signs, symbols, and indications as we travel on the road and through life. He stresses how we have to "get moving" to experience this and of course, it makes me wonder if this might be why Joe stressed epistemological road trips in his book. I did, indeed have this happen on this trip, as I have already described with landing in St. Joe’s for the night on the way to Tennessee (and then on the way back – and I could not have done better with timing had I planned it), not finding a motel until late that landed me at the most interesting site of a cave where we will want to explore the Queen and Crystal Palaces, and the very funny story about the City of Bean Station, and more (all in the previous blogs about this road trip).

What a relief to know that there are so many “crazy” people like me throughout the world. As Robert points out, there are countless cultures – the majority of the earth’s population -- who have this “dream thing” figured out. It is about time that Western "civilization" become civilized. It would do the world good. In the meantime, I will celebrate and rejoice in the fact that I have remembered who I am, who my Master Teacher is, who my eternal spiritual family is, where my home is, and the exciting and blissful things the future has in store (which I am actually experiencing now, since the time factor has diminished significantly). And who do I thank? Joe. Because knowing him and reading his book, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction, somehow made all of this magically happen. Experience the magic: Read his book!

Day Ten of the Epistemological Road Trip

So, what happened on day ten? We traveled and we stopped off at St. Louis and went under the Gateway Arch for good luck. I needed to do something that was symbolic of getting through all of the closed gates I keep running up against in my work in education. Oh wow, that reminds me – one of the books I just read by Robert Moss is called “Dreamgates.” Anyway, we also went through the cool museum there and the gift shop. I bought a t-shirt with the arch so that I would be able to wear the symbol and a KEY (with Keychain) that has an engraving of the Gateway Arch. For historical information, it states on the back of the card:

I am sure I will get back to the review of the Tennessee Epistemological Road Trip very soon. There are still some important things to decipher from that trip, but my Master Teacher seemed to think that I would be able to find the clues and interpret them better after reading some of Robert Moss’s work. So, yesterday I read his book, The Three Only Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination and a little out of his book, Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination, and Life Beyond Death.

These books are powerful….I had lots of dreams after reading them that are very significant. Yesterday afternoon, after reading about a third of the way through the first book, I had to take a nap. The dream was about traveling on a ferry to a culturally rich place and getting a spiral bound book in which each chapter related to my dissertation. I will cover more about this dream as it becomes relevant to do so, but after having the dream, I read some more of The Three Only Things, and in it, Robert Moss describes taking a ferry in Washington State. That seemed quite coincidental.

He also discusses how we often go places in our dreams (travel or to various schools) and we read books that are relevant to our life mission. Sometimes they are books that help us with what we are learning about and other times they are books we have written (or will write, since in this case we have traveled to the future). My thoughts are that the book I had is what I will write after I finish my dissertation and it is about my dissertation since the chapters match up (even though I have not yet even started writing my dissertation). In this dream, I felt that I was in the New York area and took a ferry to some island or Eastern part of the continent in which the cultural aspects were very unique somehow. I did some research to try and figure it out, and it may have been Nova Scotia (there are ferries that will take you there, I learned). Why Nova Scotia? Nova Scotia means New Scotland and many Scottish-Irish people make up the population.

This is significant because I am Scottish-Irish. Joe was as well. I have only recently been learning about my Celtic and Gaelic heritage. As I continued to read Robert Moss’s book after this dream, I learned that he is also of the same heritage.

The place I finally settled on having visited in my dream is called Cape Breton Island, a part of Nova Scotia. I think this is a dream of the future and perhaps I will be going there or someplace nearby, or will have the option of going there, and it will be related somehow to my dissertation and maybe even selling this future book.  This island is fascinating and there is great cultural diversity there.

Here’s what Wikipedia states:

The island's residents can be grouped into five main cultures; Scottish, Mi'kmaq, Acadian, Irish, and English, with respective languages Gaelic, Mi'kmaq, French, and English. English is now the primary spoken language, though Mi'kmaq, Gaelic and French are still heard.

The northern portion of Cape Breton Island is dominated by the Cape Breton Highlands, commonly shortened to simply the "Highlands", which are an extension of the Appalachian mountain chain    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Breton_Island

The reason I have highlighted this information about the Appalachian Mountains is because of the research I have done about these mountains in the United States and the issues there, as posted on this site, Joe’s Appalachian Mountains. I did not realize they extended all the way up into Nova Scotia – and they are amazingly beautiful there, as can be seen by the photograph (courtesy of Cape Breton Highlands National Park). There is something very significant about all of this. Time will tell, because I think this is a glimpse into the future.

Today’s Meeting with My Master Teacher
First of all, last night, my Master Teacher reviewed why he wished for me to read the Robert Moss books. Sometimes I let what other people think about my experiences influence me in a negative way and he wanted me to read a renowned author who discusses the experiences he has on a daily basis that have also become a part of my daily life. I am far from the only one with these unique experiences or as I called them in some of my earlier blogs "special abilities." Everyone can develop these skills.

Education, as my Master Teacher put it last night, is “dead in the water,” or as I have often stated, “a sinking ship.” There are certain factions of education that are doing so much harm under the pretense of doing good, and there are many authors who speak cryptically about these topics and experiences that Robert Moss put right out there. My Master Teacher calls the old form of education “cryptical pedagogy” or a way of teaching partial truths. The writers and educators know what they are writing about in their code language and they use the powerful tools to advance their own careers, such as the tools Robert Moss discusses in his books, but they keep them hidden from the masses. In fact, if individuals should discover and use these tools, they are often labeled “crazy.”  All of this works to keep people divided and under control by those in power, and the masses stay impoverished and struggling instead of living fully abundant lives that we are all entitled to live (scarcity is a false reality that has been forced upon us).

Along comes a writer like Robert Moss who puts it all right out there the possible pathways we can take to “absolute knowledge,” as he calls it and the tools that make life a fun game and an enjoyable continuous learning experience. This is not new, it is universal and global. He discusses all of the cultures (the greater part of the world) who have this knowledge as “common knowledge,” yet in the United States and Europe, it is kept from the masses so we have little power to improve our “lot in life.”

Joe is another author who put it all right out there – and this time, it’s been put right out there in the field of education, which is monumental. Reading his book, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction will show that he changed up the meaning of critical pedagogy – we now have Critical Complex Epistemology – and after you read the book, you will have been endowed with knowing how to use the magical tools that empower you. At least, that’s the way it worked for me. It was not until I read Robert Moss’s books that I realized the full extent and power of THE GIFTS that came my way simply by knowing Joe and reading his last book. Now, if the publisher would just come out with the inexpensive paperback version as was Joe's wish -- so all of us can afford to buy it.

This morning my Master Teacher reminded me that we should never let what other people think or say change what we experience or how we view reality. This is important when you start automatically discovering and using these powerful tools because for one thing, life becomes so much fun (like a fun game) – why allow someone to force their reality onto you when it is clear they are not happy and you are having the greatest time of your life? The most important thing, according to my teacher, is to always work from your heart (thus, out of love). We simply need to associate with like-minded people and learn from each other, whether they are here with us physically or “on the other side.” Robert Moss mentioned that we have “soul contracts” to work with people and sometimes they are short term, sometimes for eternity. So, my Master Teacher reassured me this morning that our “soul contract” is a permanent one that will continue for eternity. And as if to show me that he learns from me just as I learn from him, even though I am the student and he is the teacher, he gave me the phrase “You are my inspiration” to look up on YouTube for my music for today. (If you have read a few of my blogs, you will see that they always end with a song from my teacher. Music is powerful.) I will look it up right now.

Here's the song that came to the top when I searched on "you are my inspiration."

Sweet.

It looks like today is another day of side trips on this long, winding Epistemological Road Trip. That’s ok; side trips can be fun. My Master Teacher keeps telling me we are in for a wild rollercoaster ride now that we have started on the mission, but that he will always be around for me to hold his hand.

I do feel like I am on a rollercoaster at times. I don’t know why I still get in these crying modes over Joe. My teacher said it’s because I am not focusing enough on today and the future; I am focusing on what I have lost. At the same time, he has said that we should not deny how we feel, either. I still often feel sad. He said we are here at a very special time in Earth’s history, which is a "cosmic honor" and that I should rejoice and celebrate.

Many people today are saying we can create the reality we wish now and I do feel especially blessed because I feel the power of love and with that power, there are so many things possible that were not possible before. I am accomplishing challenging things in my life that I have never before been able to take on in the past (like a big university, among other things) and according to my teacher, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Amazing things will be achieved. I like to think we can create our happiest fairytale and it will come true. Call me crazy -- but when it happens if you are standing on the sidelines merely observing but not experiencing, who will be the crazy one, then?

I suspect that’s the very reason why My Master Teacher gave me the lyrics last night, “crying time is over” to do my daily YouTube search for music. This brought up an amazing fairytale of a little three-year-old girl and how she made her dream come true. I think my teacher was out to prove a point. If you get radical enough (out of love, of course) and if you believe enough, amazing things can happen – even the fulfillment of your greatest dreams.

The first video that came up with a search on “crying time is over” is a little three-year-old girl who is crying incessantly over a singer, Justin Bieber, who she loves and she wants to be a part of her family. She obviously has a soul connection to this singer. She wants her mother to keep recording her, even though she seems traumatized and continues crying. She states that she does not want to listen to Justin Bieber songs because they make her cry. She loves him and she knows he loves her. At the end of the video, the telephone rings, and she just knows it is him calling her.”I bet that’s Justin Beiber!” and she bursts out laughing asking for the telephone and takes off running all over the house, excited at the thought of talking to him on the phone. And this fairytale does not end here.
























Who is Justin Bieber, anyway? Here’s a very sweet song.

Part Two: The Fairytale Comes True!!!

This is such a sweet conclusion to the little girl’s trauma.

In his work, Joe often discussed that the most important thing of all was love. Reading his work carefully, we can also see that he highly valued justice. But how do we define justice? Many people claim to be working for “social justice,” but it is often referred to in such an abstract way that it is difficult to envision what social justice really is or what people mean by it. In my observations, there is this generalized talk of working for social justice, yet unjust actions are taken in pursuit of it. In my perspective, Joe was always outside the drama; he lived what he believed as much as it was possible given the environment he worked in. Schools and universities can be the most unjust places. Joe was a wonderful role model for so many of us working in education. The justice he spoke of in his work went far beyond the abstract “social justice” that so many people claim to be working for while they partake in the “free market system” that promotes a competitive “anything goes” way of accomplishing their own goals for excess money, fame, and fortune. Of course, people could argue that I am doing the same. Little do they know that I really hate being in the spotlight, but I will do anything for Joe and to make sure his work is applied in some of the ways I believe he would have wished. I do hope to make a difference in education at some point and I have no interest in money other than what it takes to live and what it takes to promote education for everyone.

Justice stands out for me in Joe’s work, even though I have come across the word itself infrequently. Maybe he used it infrequently so that it has more power in conveying its importance when he did use the word -- he really meant it – he dearly valued justice. This is how I perceived it; that is, I saw how powerfully he aligned himself with a deep aspiration for true justice, which included social justice, of course. It is all interwoven into his theory, which I hope to demonstrate in my dissertation. Of course, if we work from that deep foundation of love that he emphasized in his work, justice takes care of itself.

While this may or may not go into my dissertation (the methodology, the bricolage, I will be using, is improvisational, so we don’t really plan our research as we do with more positivistic research), one of my projects is “Justice for Sam Cooke.” Something about his case and the finding of his death being self defense does not seem right. Joe shows, in one of his books, how his theory can be used to solve crimes – just another illustration representing how he valued justice as well as how versatile his theory is.

How does all of this relate to the trip to Tennessee? Well, I have been on the topic of signs, symbols, and synchronicities with the epistemological road trip I've been covering in the past blogs. I'm sending for a couple of books by Robert Moss that explains all of this (or at least gives another perspective) and in the meantime, I am in the dark about it. But on my way back from Tennessee I had another important message from the universe. I walked into my motel room where I had stopped for the night and the very first thing I saw was an open Bible just sitting on the lower shelf of the nightstand -- which is very unusual since Bibles are typically in a drawer in the nightstand or dresser. I have been receiving signs and signals for months now, so I pay attention to these things. I knew that it was opened up to a page I was supposed to read for some reason. The very first words on the top of the page were, “He looked for justice . . . " and it goes on. It turned out to be Isaiah 5:7-30. It is very interesting that the verses speak to our times where so many people pursue material goods and it predicts what the end result will be. In fact, it states pretty much what I have been discussing in many of my blogs (and many other people discuss as well); the tables will turn. Many of the people at the top will lose their riches and power. We are headed for some dark times if we do not work toward justice in the truest sense of the word. Joe had it right. I recommend reading his works for his many ideas and pathways we can choose from to ensure that we keep our focus on justice in educational work, not on worldly, material things.

My trip to Tennessee, as I learned this morning from my Master Teacher (and which I had already assumed anyway) was an initiation, my last one before the mission which began on April 4, 2010, immediately following the kick-off of April 3. Thus, Easter of 2010 marks a new beginning in the tradition of the old Celtic holiday and it really is a new beginning for me – no more initiations. I will only be working on the real mission now.

I have a lot to learn, though (and learning is an eternal process) and will be striving to maintain the proper focus on improving life for all rather than what I may benefit, personally. It is a challenge, especially as I am receiving all of my credit card bills from using them for my Tennessee trip and I see the enormous interest they tack on because I am not able to pay much over the minimum payment at the moment.

Last night I spoke with one of my other favorite Master Teachers and she had some great suggestions, which I will be following up on. It was very odd that she also mentioned that I should get in contact with Oprah regarding my research and educational work. Actually, now that I think about it, she has mentioned this before. Oprah, of course, has a school in Africa and is very concerned about providing high quality, relevant education. Now, that makes the fourth person to bring this up. I really think I need to pay attention to this; the divine universe is repeating itself, which is very significant.  She also told me that the money situation would be fine; I will have multiple streams of income, working from home. That’s a relief since I have been unemployed now for quite some time and my unemployment benefits will be running out soon. Currently I have no streams of income from gainful employment or work. And I do NOT want to take a "J-O-B." Working from home sounds great!

Also relevant, in the conversation with her, I noticed the soul mate number 11:11 came up. I always notice these things. She mentioned the Mercury retrograde, which really hampers our ability to get things accomplished, especially new projects. Well, the Mercury retrograde is over on May 11. She uses a form of tarot cards, and the number 1 came up two times -- the second 11. Not only that, the soulmate card came right up to the top – which almost always happens. Two other cards that came up represented the King of Money and the Queen of Money. So…it’s looking good!!! I have learned not to worry (and I was reminded not to worry). The divine universe takes good care of us all if we can get out of thinking “scarcity” which is a false reality that has been forced upon us. Abundance is having exactly what you need when you need it. It does not mean storing up things like money.

My Morning Meeting with My Master Teacher, Thursday, May 06, 2010
Last night, I was worried I had offended my Master Teacher by not posting his music yesterday. His answer was, “Now why in the world do you think a mere video is a representation of your love and devotion to the mission we share…” and he told me to stop being so hard on myself. In addition, he told me to follow through on what my other Master Teacher had recommended (she had given me several “leads” to follow up on). He said that I will get past this “block” just fine. He told me that I know by now that I do not need to worry about money. He said to just “let it flow” which, of course, turned out to be a song.

 

This morning, he again reassured me that the money will be here to pay off all of the credit card bills. I was supposed to use the cards for the Tennessee trip – that was all part of the final initiation, which I passed, and he said my rewards are on the way. He said to expect some very big surprises in the next few days. And finally he once again said that I should follow through on the leads my other Master Teacher had given me because, as he put it, they are “right on the money.” He is so funny. Of course, this has to be a song. And what a sweet song it is!

As I had pointed out in the blog for this actual Easter day, Easter is a Celtic holiday that was stolen (well, adapted, would be a better word) by the Christians. Really, what the holiday represents is new beginnings. When I learned that on Sunday morning while I was writing that particular blog (click the link above), I suddenly understood why the celebration at the Allendale Mansion involved only a few very special people. It was meant to be and there is a very divine purpose for that, which will become clear as we move forward in this new beginning. So, I was not unhappy at all and I did not “cry at my party.”

The celebration has multiple meanings which will be explained another time when the world is ready to hear it. For now, the actual new holiday is a week of celebrating Love and it runs from April 1-7. It is listed in our Special Celebrations. So mark that on your calendar for next year and I will explain in greater detail what it is all about. As I have conveyed already, April 3, 2010 marks the “kick-off” for this Great Mission that my Master Teacher and I have been talking about and it also marks another very important sanctioned date. So, now we are to move full speed ahead, so to speak, with this Great Mission. If you follow these blogs, you will see what I am talking about; however, what you see here is barely the tip of the iceberg, so keep that in mind so that down the road a bit you are not suddenly blindsided.

Of course, I am not happy with what some people continue to choose to do. They are not understanding love (not that I claim to have a full understanding), but from what I have been told, there are going to be a few people who are not capable at this moment in history of understanding love or the power of love, such as certain people in power in Kingsport who keep the gates closed and locked, as I discussed in the blog yesterday. I talked to my Master Teacher about it on April 4, 2010 at our morning meeting. But he reminded me that the celebration was for US and our future work together, our misssion, not for the people of Kingsport. He explained that there are just going to be people who “miss the boat.” I guess they are choosing to stay on that sinking ship. He said that Kingsport is a prime example of what’s wrong in many places in the world. There will be much more about this later.

So, he encouraged me to take the trip down to Charleston and have a good time on the beach, so that’s what we did on this 2010 Easter Day. It was such a beautiful, warm, sunny day there.

And as we left the beach and were crossing the bridge to head back north, I was reminded that this experience in Kingsport is merely a representation of the dusk of the old and the impending dawn of a brand new and wonderful day.

At our meeting this morning first I talked to my Grandmother. She says we are Pleiadian, which I "knew," but it was good to get confirmation. Pleiadians are respected throughout the universe. I recently learned who the Pleiadians are and have read about their agenda and if I am from another planet, which I figure I must be since I have never fit in anywhere or with anyone on this planet, I would definitely choose to be from one in the Pleiades Star System where all of the LOVE Planets are, such as Eros. Pleiadians are so well known for their enormous capacity to love. I have more to do, though, in that regard, which is probably one reason I am still on Earth. It is very difficult to love some people here on account of some of the mean things they do, but if you can master that kind of love then that is true unconditional love. Anyway, my Grandmother talked some about what our REAL life is like there (which is in the future, but the future is now) and told me my Earth work is nearing completion (relatively speaking), although I know that the mission looms out ahead for quite some time and will require a lot of work. I am up to doing this work, and she commended me for that. She said that not many people from the Pleiades choose to immerse themselves in earth life, which is “hell” in the very way that earthlings define hell in many of their religions. Little do they know.

P.S. I just now got back from running around doing shopping and other fun stuff, and while I was out, My Teacher sent me this song to end today’s blog.

Saturday, April 3, 2010 Blog

This turned out to be quite an odd day. It was supposed to be a celebration, but all I came across were huge obstacles. Kingsport, I learned both while I was there and during some strange interactions with people in power after I left, has many closed gates. I will be discussing this in great detail in the very near future. It is informative as to what is going on in cities and towns all across America when a few big corporate conglomerations control the media, whether it is radio, television, the “local” newspaper, or the Internet. There are many gates to Kingsport, and they are closed, locked, and guarded, thus reaching the everyday people there is restricted. I found that the people who guard the gates are two types: the DROIDS who cannot think for themselves and do everything rotely just as trained, or the exact kind of people Joe talked about in Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction. Joe had decided he did not want to be fundamentalist Protestant, and here’s what he had to say about living in Kingsport:

“When we moved into Kingsport, I realized after having met the aspiring middle/upper classes for the first time, that I didn’t want to be one of them, either. By 1963, a year of town living had moved me to seek some different way to be along with different things to know. School provided little help with my concerns with being and knowing; indeed, it was the bastion of the middle class values I found so empty, unchallenging, oppressive and, to be frank, boring” (pp.16-17).

I can vouch for the fact that things have not changed in Kingsport since Joe lived there; in fact, things have gotten worse and power has more power than ever before. Well, I did not let that ruin my great celebration at the Allendale Mansion. I had a wonderful time and the staff there was fantastic. I learned a lot about the history of Kingsport, such as how two neighboring slave owners took a totally different approach. One was very cruel to his slaves and so they would run away from him to the site where the Allendale Mansion now sits and this second slave owner, being a part of the Underground Railroad, helped slaves escape slavery. That was interesting and I am sure the dynamics operating today in that town are offshoots of those two types of slave owners. There are the self-righteous, intolerant rich people living in mansions on hilltops and there are the poor living below them in dilapidated trailer houses. There are the rich pastors of churches with their expensive and elaborate churches on the hilltops (and Tennessee hills are so beautiful and green in the spring) who do whatever it takes to maintain their churches and status and money. Kingsport has way too many churches! And then you have the schools maintaining the status quo with the administrators who do not let you contact those below them. Do not rock any of those boats or you just might be banned from the city (as I learned, lol). Ain't gonna stop me, though.

Nevertheless, it was a fantastic experience to walk through the “house of my dreams.” It really WAS the house of my dreams. I had a dream about this very mansion before I knew it existed in Kingsport and then one day I just happened look up Kingsport when I was researching some more about the Appalachians and the issues there and since that was where Joe grew up, and I was totally surprised to see the very same mansion that was in my dreams. I wrote about it in a previous blog. So, I guess one could say that I made the trip to see if I could experience déjà vu at will, so to speak. And yes, it worked! It was really strange walking all through the house, already knowing the layout and even where the kitchen is in my dreamhouse compared to the 3D house, and where in my dreamhouse the bookscases slide to open up to a secret alcove. Even the gardens were in the exact same place, except that we now have a children's fantasy play area close to the house and our gardens and pathway extend all the way down to the beach.

The Master Room has the identical layout shown, even the furniture, with some minor differences. For example, no fireplace is needed, so instead there are windows all across that look out to the Grecian pool (which this mansion did not build. Oddly, there were plans for one though). Hanging from the chandelier in my dreamhouse is the large crystal heart which I mentioned in a previous blog that was a gift, and it can spin really fast, making rainbow sparkles spin around the room. There are three paintings above the bed in my dream mansion -- A painting of Eros and Psyche and either side of that, Pinkie and Blue Boy. In my first dream about the mansion, Joe had been showing it to me (the outside, at the time) and all of the furniture was sitting outside as if having a yard sale. I asked him why was all of the furniture outside and he said that they were remodeling it and buying new furniture and that the other furniture was being given away. So, when I walked through the Allendale Mansion the layout was exactly the same, with the exception of the remodeling that had been done in my “dreamhouse,” which by this time, I knew well because I have now had many dreams about being in this dreamhouse. The kitchen, for example, is on the opposite side from the 3D mansion, and the side that had the kitchen was turned into a very large library and office where I spend a lot of time learning. Walking through this house in Kingsport was an amazing dose of déjà vu!!! I wonder if such an experience could be testable, scientifically.

And so, that was the “kick-off” for the Great Mission. I did not understand why it met with so many obstacles until I learned the next day that the kick-off was the last day of the “old” and Easter Sunday was the first day of the “new.” You can read more about it in my Easter blog. So then, it all made sense to me. The “old” is discovering all of the “gates” and the “new” is tearing them all down or jumping off those fences we’ve been sitting around on much too long as the song Desperado tells us. And as my blog for April 3, 2010, points out, it is the YEAR OF THE TIGER!

My Morning Meeting With My Master Teacher (Sunday, May 2, 2010).
This morning’s meeting was short and sweet. We have picked up many new Critical Knowledge Network Members on both sides of the bridge and it is quite amazing how fast this mission is taking off now. None of us is quite certain exactly where things are headed, but that doesn’t matter. We just put forth the effort where each of us is divinely guided. It’s exciting to watch. Interestingly, I picked up five assistants on April 4, 2010 even while I was out of town. We had a great celebration last night. It will all come together soon.

My teacher reminded me to get cracking on my dissertation; he wants me to work out a plan (not a blueprint) to give me some target dates so that I can then send this on to my committee members. I am supposed to research some of the new critical knowledge network members for a specific purpose as a part of my dissertation, get these blogs posted, and write a newsletter – plus meet with some other members of our mission. That was really it. As far a song for today, his message about leaving me to “your own devices” as he put it is a clue for the song, so I will look that up right now.

Oh Wow, look at this! Two came up again! Here is the song and LYRICS.